Report suggests age is used to justify bias against women in the workplace
The post For Women, There’s Never a Right Age to Lead, Survey Finds first appeared on The News And Times – thenewsandtimes.com.
Month: October 2023
Nine years after a massive waste spill from a copper mine in the northern Mexican border state of Sonora, locals are still suffering from “alarming” levels of soil, air and water pollution, Mexico’s Environment Department said Thursday.
Summarizing a 239-page report, officials also confirmed, using satellite images, that the spill was not solely caused by dramatic rainfall, as was initially reported, but by the “inadequate design” of a dam at Buenavista del Cobre mine, owned by the country’s largest copper producer, Grupo México.
Locals and environmental advocates say the report offers the clearest view yet of the catastrophic scale of the accident and, with it, new hope that Grupo México may finally be held financially accountable after almost a decade of legal battles and broken promises.
“We expect that, with this new document, we’ll have an easy path for getting the money,” said Luis Franco, a community coordinator with regional advocacy group PODER. “At the moment, I’m happy but at the same time I know this is just the beginning for the people of Sonora,” he said. “We have to keep fighting.”
On Aug. 6, 2014, after heavy rainfall, 40 million liters of acidified copper sulfate flooded from a waste reservoir at Buenavista mine into the Sonora and Bacanuchi rivers, just under 100 kilometers from the border city of Nogales, Sonora.
After the spill, Grupo México first agreed to give 1.2 billion pesos (about $68 million) to a recovery fund, but in 2017 that trust was closed and the remaining funds returned to the mining company, PODER claims. After a legal battle, the trust was reopened three years later but, said Franco, without any new funding.
Mexico’s environmental secretary María Luisa Albores González insisted Thursday during a news briefing that the report was solely “technical,” not “ideological,” but added that the trust would remain open until 2026.
“We in this institution do not accept said trust is closed,” said Albores González.
In another report earlier this year Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change calculated the total cost of the spill at over 20 billion pesos ($1.1 billion), more than 16 times the size of the original support fund.
“Under no circumstances” have locals been given enough money to recover, according to the report. “Neither the amount paid for the fine, nor the compensation given to the Sonora River Trust cover the direct, indirect or cumulative effects on the population, the ecosystem or the economy.”
The initial fund promised to open 36 water treatment stations and a toxicology clinic. But according to the Sonora River Basin Committees, a group of locals from the eight polluted townships, only one water station is open and the clinic has long been abandoned.
Unsafe levels of arsenic, lead and mercury have been recorded across over 250 square kilometers around the spill. Across the Sonoran townships of Ures, Arizpe, Baviácora, Aconchi, Banamichi, Cananea, Huépac and San Felipe de Jesús, locals have complained of health risks and decreased productivity in their farms and ranches.
In what officials described as one of their most “alarming” findings, 93% of soil samples from the city of Cananea did not meet international requirements for arsenic levels.
Adrián Pedrozo Acuña, director general for the Mexican Institute for Water Technology, said the pollution had also impacted the region’s drinking water. “The results presented here show very clearly that there is a safety or health problem in the water the population consumes,” he said.
Franco, who lives in the nearby city of Hermosillo, said this brings the most urgency for communities in which many cannot afford to buy bottled water.
Since the spill, Buenavista del Cobre has continued to operate — and grown in size. In the years immediately before the accident production increased threefold, according to Pedrozo. By 2020 it had grown half as big again, in what he described as “chronic overexploitation” of the area’s water supplies.
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In northern Chile, Teofila Challapa learned to weave surrounded by the hills and sandy roads of the Atacama Desert.
“Spin the threads, girl,” her grandmother told her a half a century ago.
Aymara women like Challapa, now 59, become acquainted with wool threads under blue skies and air so thin that outsiders struggle to breathe. While herding llamas and alpacas through scarce grasslands 11,500 feet above sea level, they create their first textiles.
“We had no clothes or money, so we needed to learn how to dress with our own hands,” said Challapa, sitting next to fluffy alpacas outside her humble home in Cariquima, a town with fewer than 500 inhabitants near the Chile-Bolivia border.
The knowledge of her craft passes on from one generation to another, securing Aymara families’ bond with their land.
Challapa prays before beginning her work: “Mother Earth, give me strength, because you’re the one who will produce, not me.”
Among the 3 million Aymaras who live along the borders of Chile, Perú and Bolivia, the Earth is known as “Pachamama.” Homages and rituals requesting her blessings are intertwined in everyday life.
“I believe in God, but the Earth provides us with everything,” Challapa said.
Pachamama offers Challapa inspiration for her textiles, connections to ancestors and her cultural identity. It provides means for survival, too.
“My animals are my mother,” Challapa said.
Her alpacas and llamas were a source of meat, wool and company during the tough years she spent raising her children as a single mother.
In the neighboring town of Colchane, Efrain Amaru and Maria Choque share their one-floor house with Pepe, an elegant white llama that flirts with visitors.
“To be an artisan, one must have the raw materials,” said Amaru, a 60-year-old descendant of Aymara craftsmen. His parents taught him how to raise camelids that produce the finest wool. “You have to communicate with your animals because they are part of you.”
Ahead of Pachamama Day, on August 1, the couple prepared a ritual honoring Mother Earth. Over a mantle they weaved for the occasion, they placed grains from their crops and pieces of wool — among other objects they are grateful for — and asked for prosperity.
“We make offerings hoping for good seeds and crops, welfare for our animals and rain,” Choque said. “Then we turn to the moon and the stars. Our grandparents told us that those are the souls of our ancestors, who look at us from above.”
Choque learned how to turn wool into thread when she was 6. Without toys to play with, Choque said, she and her peers spent their days watching their elders weave — a demonstration of the craft and how to live fulfilling lives.
Her grandmother was her first teacher. After giving her a sewing needle, she taught Choque how to produce socks and hats. Vests and ponchos came after that.
Once a young disciple masters sewing needles, she moves on to weaving on looms. A few years later, she’ll face her utmost challenge: weaving her own “aksu,” the Aymara’s most precious and traditional garment.
“My aksu is not a suit,” Choque said. “It’s a part of me. When I was little, I wore mine daily, until I had to wear a uniform for school.”
From wool production to fabric making, the entire textile-making process can take up to two years.
Aymara craftswomen shear their animals in October, when the weather is milder. Their llamas keep a few inches of wool to keep them warm and ready for the “floreo.” During this ancient ritual celebrated in February, Aymaras tie wool flowers and pompoms to their camelids identifying them as their property and thanking Pachamama for abundance.
Once the wool is collected and clean, craftswomen manipulate it with the tip of their fingers and pull threads out of it, creating skeins that are mounted on their looms for weaving.
Through the income they made from the sale of their textiles, Aymara women like Challapa and Choque could afford to send their children off to school.
“I thank God because I always told myself: I don’t want them to be like me,” said Marcelina Choque (no relation to Maria), another craftswoman who lives in the town of Pozo Almonte. “This is my only profession. If I don’t sell, I have nothing.”
Progress, though, is bittersweet. “I taught my daughters how to weave just like me, but now that they have other jobs, they don’t weave anymore,” Marcelina Choque said.
Because so many young people move away from their hometowns for study and work, several craftswomen agree their legacy might be in danger. Although they passed on their knowledge to their descendants, there are currently only a handful of young Aymara women who know how to use a loom.
“In rural areas, there is a significant migration of young people, and the population is aging,” said Luis Pizarro, who works at the Agricultural Development Institute of Chile. “Their grandparents are the ones who remain in the territories, so their cultural roots are severed.”
The institute supports rural development for Chilean communities linked to the Aymara culture, according to Pizarro. The goal is to boost camelid farming and craft sales through fairs, an online presence and special events.
On a recent weekend, the institute held a fashion show inside a city shopping center in Iquique, where Teofila Challapa, Maria Choque and other women sold textiles and their daughters modeled their work.
“We try to get daughters and granddaughters of artisans involved in their cultural inheritance,” Pizarro said.
Nayareth Challapa (no relation to Teofila) speaks proudly about her mother, Maria Aranibar, who taught her how to pick the perfect weeds to dye wool.
“The colors of our textiles are related to nature: the earth, the sky, the hills. The land is sacred for us,” the 25-year old said. The work reflects craftswomen’s moods and “the rheas, llamas, flowers and mountains she wants to keep present.”
She, too, moved to a city to attend university, but home is never far from her heart.
“When migrating, many forget their ethnicity and leave their roots behind,” Challapa said. “But my family tries to avoid that. We herd the llamas and raise crops to preserve what my grandfather taught us. If we were to lose that, we would lose him as well.”
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The British Defence Ministry reported that Russia is set to dramatically increase its defence spending in 2024, a worrying sign Moscow is preparing to continue its fight in Ukraine for years to come.
Mentioning documents “apparently leaked from Russia’s Finance Ministry”, the UK’s MoD said in its latest intelligence update shared on X, formerly Twitter, that “Russia’s defence spending is set to surge to approximately 30 percent of total public expenditure in 2024.”.
The assessment continued: “The ministry proposes a defence budget of 10.8 trillion roubles, equivalent to approximately 6 percent of GDP and a 68 percent increase over 2023.”
Russia, Britain’s MoD believes, can bear the brunt of a similar level of defence spending through the next year, “but only at the expense of the wider economy”.
The assessment also warned such a dramatic demand on the wider economy signals the Kremlin wants its troops to remain on the Ukrainian battlefields for years.
It read: “Full details on Russian defence spending are always classified, but these figures suggest that Russia is preparing for multiple further years of fighting in Ukraine.
“This follows public comments by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on 27 September 2023, suggesting he was prepared for the conflict to continue into 2025.”
Mr Shoigu told Russian top military commanders during a meeting last week that their army “continues increasing its combat capacity”.
He continued: “Consistent implementation of measures within the framework of the action plan until 2025 will allow us to achieve the intended goals.”
This came after Russian President Vladimir Putin approved several manoeuvres to beef up the number of Russia‘s troops, including raising the conscription age for Russian men from 27 to 30.
Last winter, it also emerged the president wanted to bolster his country’s armed forces from 1.15 million to 1.5 million combat personnel.
Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Following a lightning advance on Kyiv, many Russian commentators expected Volodymyr Zelensky‘s government and army to capitulate and concede defeat in just days.
But as Ukraine came together to resist Russia and the Western world provided military aid to Kyiv and economic sanctions against Moscow, the invasion turned into a long conflict.
While Russian air strikes regularly target several areas across Ukraine, the ground fighting has been focused in recent months on the southern and eastern fronts, where Kyiv is trying to gain back territories occupied and illegally annexed by Moscow.
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México is swimming against a tide of Western crackdowns on Russian espionage. While more than 600 suspected spies have been expelled from Russian embassies across Europe since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Mexican government in recent months has authorized 37 new diplomats in the Russian Embassy in Mexico City on top of the 49 already there, for a staggering 86, according to the foreign ministry´s Directory of Foreign Missions (which is no longer available to the public but I obtained). Russia currently has by far the largest diplomatic contingent than any other legation in Mexico City, including the American Embassy, which has 46 diplomats, not including diplomatic personnel in their nine consulates across the country.
A Russian regiment was invited to participate in Mexico’s Independence Day parade, outraging many Mexicans, not to mention Ukraine’s ambassador
The 60 per cent jump in the months after the invasion has no diplomatic justification for either side, considering their traditionally low-level relationship. Mexico-Russian trade is equivalent to one day of business between Mexico and the U.S. But it does offer something else of high value to Moscow: a platform for espionage against the behemoth to the north. What Mexico gets out of it is another question.
It is no secret that Russia has historically used its diplomats for spying on the United States and that the Russian embassy, an imposing, walled complex in the heart of Mexico City, with large satellite dishes on the roof, has a decades-old reputation for being an espionage safe haven—more so in times of war. During the height of the Cold War, U.S. intelligence estimated that at least 150 KGB officers were working in Mexico under cover of diplomats, clerks, drivers and journalists.
To be sure, under a longstanding security cooperation effort between the United States and Mexico, the CIA has historically had a robust presence in Mexico, if only as an arena safer than Moscow to meet its Russian agents or pitch others on defecting. But in the depths of the Cold War it ran numerous operations to neutralize Mexican communist sympathizers. In the past decade and a half, its numbers and operations increased as they became more engaged in the war against drug cartels.
In 2020 the Mexican congress, angered by DEA operations, passed a law that limits the number of all foreign agents and stripped them of diplomatic immunity—not that it curtailed Russian espionage operations.
“Spies almost always operate under diplomatic cover and Mexico has always been a number one target for Russia because of its proximity to the U.S., ” says John Feeley, a retired career U.S. ambassador who specializes in Latin American security issues. “It’s a very convenient place to spy on the U.S. Their U.S. undercover assets can travel as tourists to Cancun and be debriefed by their handlers with no one watching.
Feeley, who served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in Mexico City during 2009-2012, told me that the large number of Russian diplomats in Mexico, “makes no sense if they would be doing traditional diplomatic work. Why so many diplomats, why such a big embassy for so little economic ties and tourism? The Russian Embassy is and has long been a center of espionage. That’s why.”
Travel Surge
Likewise, Mexico has seen a 20 per cent jump in Russian nationals entering the county in 2022, most of them to Cancun, a tourism mecca full of Americans and Europeans, according to Mexico´s Government Department. Many are Russian men fleeing the war, it’s said, but others are unspecified individuals and couples planning to give birth to anchor babies so they can apply for easily acquired Mexican immigration papers and passports that allows them to travel to the United States.
The long arm of Russian intelligence services is believed to be behind the sudden jump of Russian nationals in Cancun. Other nations have uncovered Russian spies carrying Latin American identity papers from elsewhere: Estonia recently uncovered three Russian spies carrying Argentine passports. Last spring Dutch authorities expelled a Russian spy posing as a Brazilian student. Now jailed in Brazil, the young man had previously spent two years at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., whose faculty includes former U.S. intelligence officials.
When I first published a Spanish version of this story in the Mexican news site Eje Central, the Russian embassy accused me via Twitter (now X) of spreading “Russophobia.” They didn’t deny the surge in their diplomatic roster, but maliciously claimed the list was given to me by “Langley”—shorthand for the CIA. By singling me out, Russian diplomats broke rules of protocol against publicly attacking host country citizens.
It hardly needs saying that Vladimir Putin stands out as one of the most repressive rulers in the world against Russian and foreign journalists who publish stories he does not like. By allowing them to harass a journalist in Mexico with little or no restraint, the Mexican government is de facto sanctioning the harassment of reporters.
FBI Director Christopher Wray warned last week that the number of Russian spies operating inside the United States is “still way too big,” despite efforts to identify and kick them out. “The Russian traditional counterintelligence threat continues to loom large,” he said during public remarks at the Spy Museum in Washington. But when I asked the FBI if Wray was also concerned about Russian spies in Mexico, a spokesperson told me they had nothing additional to provide.
While Wray confesses to difficulty catching Russian spies, the Mexican government doesn’t even seem to be trying. It appears to allow Russian agents to work there virtually without restraint as long as their target is the U.S., not Mexico. While President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, as he’s referred to, has joined the U.S. and its allies in non-binding condemnations of Russia’s invasion at the United Nations, he’s otherwise called NATO’s military aid to help Ukraine fight Russian aggression “immoral” and declared Mexico “neutral” in the conflict. On Saturday, a Russian regiment participated in Mexico’s 213th Independence Day parade, outraging many Mexicans, not to mention the Ukrainian ambassador. With that alone, AMLO turned himself into a useful tool in the Kremlin´s propaganda machine against the West.
GRU Playground
General Glen VanHerck, head of the U.S. Northern Command, warned last year that there are more Russian military spies in Mexico than any other country in the world.
“The largest portion of the GRU members in the world is in Mexico right now,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2022. “Those are Russian intelligence personnel. And they keep a very close eye on their U.S. opportunities to influence and access.”
The unambiguous statement did not go down well in Mexico. AMLO brushed it off, saying that Mexico was nobody’s colony. Marcelo Ebrard, at the time the Mexican foreign minister, demanded to see evidence. A NorthCom spokesperson declined to elaborate on VanHerck´s remarks when I asked him, highlighting instead the “steadfast security partnership” with their Mexican counterparts “against encroaching competitor presence and influence” in the region.
Quid Pro Quo
Because of AMLO´s cooperative stance on helping the Biden Administration curtail undocumented migration, American officials are reluctant to say anything publicly about Mexico´s welcoming of Russian spies.
“We are certainly mindful of Russia’s efforts to gain footholds and influence in Latin America and Africa—obviously, we watch that closely. It’s of concern, so we take it seriously”, responded John Kirby, the White House spokesperson for national security, when I asked him about it during a foreign media briefing in October. Kirby declined to answer specific questions concerning the Russian presence in Mexico.
If Cold War practices are any guide, one can assume that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies based in Mexico City have probably escalated their counterespionage operations—most likely without the official help of Mexican security officers. How effective they are at keeping the Russians on their toes depends on how many CIA officers have been deployed—during the Cold-war era they were far outnumbered, according to a senior American official cited in a 1985 The New York Times article—and on the technological resources they have committed. Needless to say, it would help if the U.S. persuaded Mexico to limit Russian diplomats to the same number Mexico has in Moscow (11), in compliance with reciprocity protocols. But to that, AMLO is very likely to respond, Mexico is a “neutral country.” ###
Dolia Estevez began her career in the late 1980s as a Washington-based foreign correspondent specializing in Mexico and U.S.-Mexico relations. Over the years she has freelanced and authored investigative pieces on security and corruption. Her most recent book is: Mexico, A Challenging Assignment: U.S. Ambassadors Share Their Experiences (Wilson Center).
The post Why is Mexico Offering Russia a Safe Haven for Its Spies? first appeared on The News And Times – thenewsandtimes.com.
Saudi Arabia will not hold up a peace deal even if Israel does not offer major concessions to Palestinians in their bid for statehood, three regional sources familiar with the talks said.
The Palestinians could get some Israeli restrictions eased but such moves would fall short of their aspirations for a state. As with other Arab-Israeli deals forged over the decades, the Palestinian core demand for statehood would take a back seat, the three regional sources familiar with the talks said.
“The normalization will be between Israel and Saudi Arabia. If the Palestinians oppose it the kingdom will continue in its path,” said one of the regional sources. “Saudi Arabia supports a peace plan for the Palestinians, but this time it wanted something for Saudi Arabia, not just for the Palestinians.”
The Saudi government and the US State Department did not respond to emailed questions about this article.
Netanyahu hails possibility of historic peace
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed the possibility of a “historic” peace with Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam. But to secure the prize, Netanyahu has to win the approval of parties in his a far-right coalition which reject any concessions to the Palestinians.
MbS said in a Fox News interview this month that the kingdom was moving steadily closer to normalizing ties with Israel. He spoke about the need for Israel to “ease the life of the Palestinians” but made no mention of Palestinian statehood.
US SECRETARY of State Antony Blinken walks with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan during a visit to Riyadh, in June. (credit: Ahmed Yosri/Reuters)
Nevertheless, diplomats and the regional sources said MbS was insisting on some commitments from Israel to show he was not abandoning the Palestinians and that he was seeking to keep the door open to a two-state solution.
Those would include demanding Israel transfer some Israeli-controlled territory in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA), limit Jewish settlement activity and halt any steps to annex parts of the West Bank. Riyadh has also promised financial aid to the PA, the diplomats and sources said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said any bargain must recognize the Palestinian right to a state within the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, and must stop Israeli settlement building. However, all the sources said a Saudi-Israeli deal was unlikely to address those flashpoint issues.
Netanyahu has said Palestinians should not have a veto over any peacemaking deal.
Can Israel-Saudi peace deal get support of US Congress?
Yet, even if the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia agree, winning support from lawmakers in the US Congress remains a challenge.
Republicans and those in Biden’s Democratic Party have previously denounced Riyadh for its military intervention in Yemen, its moves to prop up oil prices, and its role in the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who worked for the Washington Post. MbS denied ordering the killing.
“What’s important for Saudi Arabia is for Biden to have the pact approved by Congress,” the first regional source said, pointing to concessions Riyadh was making to secure a deal.
For Biden, a deal that builds a US-Israeli-Saudi axis could put a brake on China’s diplomatic inroads after Beijing brokered a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which Washington accuses of seeking nuclear arms. Tehran denies this.
“There was a sense that the US has abandoned the region,” said one diplomat. “By courting China, the Saudis wanted to create some anxiety that will make the US re-engage. It has worked.”
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UNION CITY, N.J. (AP) — Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey defiantly pushed back against federal corruption charges on Monday, saying nearly half a million dollars in cash authorities found in his home was from his personal savings, not from bribes, and was on hand for emergencies.
Rejecting rising calls for him to resign, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he believed he’d be cleared of charges that he took cash and gold in illegal exchange for helping Egypt and New Jersey business associates.
“I recognize this will be the biggest fight yet, but as I have stated throughout this whole process, I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be New Jersey’s senior senator,” Menendez said at Hudson County Community College’s campus in Union City, where he grew up.
He did not respond to questions and did not say whether he would seek reelection next year.
The senator is accused of helping the authoritarian regime in Egypt in return for bribes. (CNN, WABC, CHRISTINE CORNELL, GETTY IMAGES, U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE)
Addressing allegations in the indictment unsealed Friday that authorities found cash stuffed in envelopes and clothing at his home, Menendez said that stemmed from his parents’ fear of confiscation of funds from their time in Cuba.
“This may seem old fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years,” he said.
Authorities recovered about 10 envelopes with tens of thousands of dollars in cash that had the fingerprints of one of the other defendants in the case on them, according to the indictment.
Menendez also addressed his relationship with Egypt, which plays a central role in the indictment against him, suggesting he’s been tough on the country over its detention of Americans and other “human rights abuses.”
“If you look at my actions related to Egypt during the period described in this indictment and throughout my whole career, my record is clear and consistent in holding Egypt accountable,” he said.
Prosecutors say he met with Egyptian military and intelligence officials, passed along non-public information about employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwrote a letter on behalf of Egypt asking his Senate colleagues to release a hold on $300 million worth of aid. He did not directly address those allegations Monday.
The state’s Democratic leadership, including Gov. Phil Murphy, the state party chairmen and leaders of the Legislature, along with some of Menendez’s congressional colleagues, are calling on him to resign
In Washington, however, where his party holds a bare Senate majority, some of Menendez’s Democratic colleagues have stopped short of urging him to give up his seat, notably Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Even though Schumer has not called for Menendez to step down, other members of his caucus have. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Vermont Sen. Peter Welch called for his resignation on Monday, following Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman on Saturday.
Menendez did, however, step down as required as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Schumer said on Friday, when the indictment was unsealed.
If he seeks reelection, Menendez will face at least one challenger in a primary next year after Democratic Rep. Andy Kim announced over the weekend that he will run for the Senate because of the charges against the state’s senior senator.
Menendez’s reelection campaign could face significant hurdles besides the criminal indictment, the second one he has faced in eight years, in light of opposition from state party leaders.
If the Democratic Party abandons Menendez, he could lose a potent benefit of party support: the so-called party line, or preferred ballot placement in the primary, widely regarded as a significant boost to incumbents and those with establishment backing.
Menendez has denied any wrongdoing in the federal case against him, his wife and three of their business associates. In an emailed statement last week, he accused prosecutors of misrepresenting “the normal work of a congressional office” and said he will not allow his work in the Senate to be distracted by “baseless allegations.” A lawyer for his wife said she “denies any criminal conduct and will vigorously contest these charges in court.”
He and Nadine Menendez are accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold and a luxury car from a trio of New Jersey businessmen for a variety of corrupt acts.
The indictment said Menendez used his clout to interfere in three criminal cases, pressured U.S. agriculture regulators to protect an associate’s business interests, and used his position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to influence U.S. policy on Egypt.
Federal agents who searched his home in 2022 found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe, and gold bars worth more than $100,000, prosecutors said. Another $70,000 was discovered inside his wife’s safety deposit box, they said.
Some Menendez supporters attended the news conference .Among them was Manny Contreras, a resident of nearby Passaic County, who said he came to show his support for Menendez and had been voting for him for years.
“It’s a big problem for the Latino community, we don’t want to see him go, we have to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Contreras said.
He said if Menendez were found guilty, he would have to reconsider his support, but because of the good things in the Menendez’s long career, he was willing to let the process play out.
___
Catalini reported from Trenton. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
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President Joe Biden has signed a bill to fund the U.S. government through mid-November and avoid a shutdown, less than an hour before money for federal agencies was set to run out.
Biden posted a picture of himself signing the bill on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, late Saturday night. In the message, he urged Congress to get to work immediately to pass funding bills for the full fiscal year.
The U.S. Senate, in a rare weekend meeting, approved a funding bill Saturday night, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature and averting a widely dreaded shutdown of the federal government.
The bill, which passed the Senate 88-9 after winning approval in the House of Representatives, would fund the federal government through Nov. 17. The bill contains $16 billion in disaster aid sought by Biden but did not include money to help Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion.
After the vote, Biden released a statement saying the bill’s passage prevented “an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans.”
“We will have avoided a shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement after the vote. “Bipartisanship, which has been the trademark of the Senate, has prevailed. And the American people can breathe a sigh of relief.”
Had the bill not been approved by Congress and signed by the president by midnight Saturday, the federal government would have shut down.
More than 4 million U.S. military service personnel and government workers would not be paid, although essential services, such as air traffic control and official border entry points would still be staffed. Pensioners might not get their monthly government payments in time to pay bills and buy groceries, and national parks could be closed.
For days all of that seemed inevitable.
The abrupt turn of events began Saturday when Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy changed tactics and put forward the funding bill that hard-line members of his Republican caucus opposed.
The House passed the bill, 335-91. More Democrats supported it than Republicans, even though it does not contain aid for Ukraine, a priority for Biden, Democrats and many Senate Republicans.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans have lost, the American people have won,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries told reporters ahead of the vote.
Republican Representative Lauren Boebert criticized the passage of the short-term stopgap bill.
“We should have forced the Senate to take up the four appropriations bills that the House has passed. That should have been our play,” she told CNN. “We should have forced them to come to the negotiating table, to come to conference, to hash out our differences.”
McCarthy is likely to face a motion from the right-wing members of his party to remove him as speaker.
“If somebody wants to remove me because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy said of the threat to oust him. “But I think this country is too important.”
Ukraine aid still likely
In his statement, Biden noted the lack of funding for Ukraine in the bill and said, “We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.”
Support for Ukraine remains strong in Congress and late Saturday night, a bipartisan group of Senate leadership members, led by Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, released a statement vowing to ensure the United States continues “to provide critical and sustained security and economic support for Ukraine.”
NBC News quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying Biden and the Defense Department have funds to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs “for a bit longer,” but it is “imperative” that Congress pass a Ukraine funding bill soon.
In the House, the lone Democrat to vote against the funding bill was Representative Mike Quigley of Illinois, the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus. “Protecting Ukraine is in our national interest,” he said.
“This does look very chaotic, but this is not the first time it’s happened,” Todd Belt, director of the school of political management at The George Washington University, told VOA. “There is a price that has to be paid here. But that is the price of democracy. It does seem very messy sometimes. But eventually, usually you get some compromise.”
Such shutdowns have occurred four times in the last decade in the U.S., but often have lasted just a day or two until lawmakers reach a compromise to fully restart government operations. However, one shutdown that occurred during the administration of former President Donald Trump lasted 35 days, as he unsuccessfully sought funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
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